The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated the gaps in virtual learning for many of us and has been even more challenging due to the shift in the learning models. Virtual learning gaps can range from corporate shake-ups to your personal learning to your business holding back.
The age-old question still goes like this- What your employees know and what they still need to master?. Fortunately, the learning technology can provide you with the online tools your organization requires.
Even before the pandemic struck, organizations faced a dizzying pace of change and the ever-present risk that today’s best-performing companies could be tomorrow’s vanquished ones. Now in response to the crisis, leaders had to rethink how to prepare their workforces, from anticipating the skills their organizations will need, to how they will help people learn and apply new skills.
To meet this challenge the first step for anyone is to get to know what is important in the current business scenario and what we don’t know. We need to identify the skills gaps.
I’ll highlight some gaps that are holding your business or your key learning’s back, as well as tips on how to bridge them.
A) Corporate Changes: Management changes often lead to new protocols and changes in the structure of learning. Shake-ups can happen on an individual level and at the management level. For example, the employee receives a promotion or accepts another position within the company. As a result, there’s a gap between the knowledge they required for their previous position and their new responsibilities. When these notable events occur it’s best to assess employees, analyze their current skills, performance, and knowledge base to determine how to bring them up to speed. According to the Future of Jobs Report 2020 by the World Economic Forum (WEF), 85 million jobs might be disturbed by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines by 2025. With new roles being created while others become redundant, continuous re-skilling and up-skilling are essential for an expanding range of business functions.
B) Lack of Skills: Employees sometimes don’t have the skills they need to do their job effectively. For instance, they are unable to complete crucial tasks that involve more advanced skill sets. This might be because employees haven’t received the online training resources they require to build these vital skills. Research from the World Economic Forum suggests that the core skills required to perform most roles will change by 42% on average by 2022.
Thought Bulb hereby provides micro-learning online training activities that focus on specific abilities that allow participants to hone new-age skills.
C) Cross-skill Engagement: Consider employees that might be able to apply their skills differently – someone with a strong sales background could easily apply their abilities to marketing content for example. Someone with a strong background in communications could find an excellent new career in sales. Basically, the key to solving your skills shortage might be hiding right under your nose
Tactics to close the skills gap: What are executives using?
> Acquire talent from outside the organization
> Move talent across business units and divisions
> Reskill employees based on business priorities
> Leverage visa programs to source international talent
> Leverage apprenticeship/internship programs to train talent
> Leverage new and emerging educational programs/platforms to enhance employee skills
Source: 2019 Open Standards Talent Development Benchmark Study. IBM Institute for Business Value Performance Data and Benchmarking.
Which of the afore mentioned strategies and tactics has your organization implemented or planned to implement?
And as we prepare for the future, we must bring our workforce along with us. These are just some of the ways we collectively need to think about how to build a bridge to the other side of the widening skills gap.
